Aku Aku

skeptic

There's a PBS show I like to Tivo called "Closer to Truth: Science, Meaning and The Future." The format is a hosted round table where the moderator gathers (often) diametrically opposed experts on a particular topic and records the ensuing conversation/argument. My favorite episode is one which poses the question "Can Religion Withstand Technology?" The guests were a christian expert on the sociology of religion, a muslim technologist and a skeptic named Michael Shermer. Being a skeptic myself, I thoroughly enjoyed Mr Shermer's rational arguments. It turns out that Shermer is not only a skeptic, he's sort of The Skeptic, being the leader of the Skeptics Society (motto: Devoted to the Promotion of Science & Critical Thinking and the Investigation of Extraordinary Claims and Revolutionary Ideas).

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a copy of Skeptic magazine (published by Shermer) at Cody's Books in Berkeley with great teasers on the cover such as "The Future of Intelligence: Are we geting smarter or dumber? Why smart people believe dumb things" and "Science v. The Media: Why can't we just be friends?"

Also inside I found a great essay in the reader's forum discussing the difficult journey most of us have to take in order to move from customary acceptance of whatever media and culture tells us to the critical thinking of the skeptic:

To expect a single conversation or event to cause this profound transformation is unrealistic. The impact it has on a person's life can be devastating, and may require a grieving period. It is much easier to stop at "denial", when that is an option. (I certainly would have liked to stop at "denial" when I heard that my mother had died in an accident.)

Voluntarily slogging through a reconstruction of one's psychological, and philosophical foundation, I think you will agree, lacks appeal to all but the most personally motivated.

People gravitate toward the "skeptical movement" when they are strong enough or open-minded enough to accept the responsibility, effort, and personal sacrifice (socially, and spiritually) that it requires.

You can read the whole thing here (it's the second section): E-Skeptic.

Designed By a Tree

I love this concept of creating a font which is carved into a tree and then updated yearly by capturing how the tree has modified it by growing.

 

 

 

Food Delivery 2021

Ran across an interesting project which at initial glance is about food delivery called Free Food. As I explain below, that's free as in speech not beer.

The creator of it, Noah Levenson, has a pretty good intro video:

Given the project name, at first I thought it was about getting food that would be thrown out distributed to hungry folks, but watching the video, it became clear that this is more about being able to order food directly from verified local restaurants on a decentralized trust network and avoiding the (almost criminally) inefficient middle man services like DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats, etc. The README for the project explains the goals well and has a quick run down on why the middle man food "delivery" apps/services are so bad.

Using a decentralized network (think BitTorrent more than BitCoin) it allows for restaurants owners to verify their ownership of a particular local restaurant and publish their menus. This protects against the type of unauthorized listings and other fakery that the middle man services engage in, so you know you're dealing with the real restaurant. Hungry people can find the menus of nearby restaurants and place orders. Reference implementations of the diner and restaurant clients are shown, although I didn't see the source for them available. Presumably the restaurant uses its existing delivery staff for the delivery, or you can pick up.

This is an interesting project, particularly because it's potential goes well beyond just restaurant delivery. Really any resource that can benefit from decentralized (no valueless middle man required) localized (relevant to you, where you are now) discovery can benefit from this type of system. In theory a delivery drivers could advertise themselves as resources and the system could do the matchmaking. Since the network is decentralized this would mean they wouldn't have to share their fee with a middle man network provider.

I'd definitely give this a shot if it started up in my area. In the meantime there is a better sort of food delivery service that I've been using lately and have been quite happy with. It is called Club Feast (use my referral code dav1 if you try it out!). While it still is a middle man service, they have a twist on it that should benefit both the restaurants and the delivery drivers. It requires you to order your meals hours in advance (it used to be the previous day but in the past month they have been able to move it up to same day). This allows the restaurant and delivery network time to optimize the food preparation and the routes. It is a subscription service, which means you sign up for a certain number of meals a week and pre-pay for them as credits. It lets unused credits stack up and you can pause, so it is fair to the subscriber. The meal credits themselves are $7 each, so the meals are inexpensive although limited to what the restaurant decides to make available for $7. There are tons of options though so that has not been a problem for me in San Francisco. It seems like a great win-win-win compromise for the restaurants, drivers and customers, although I would love for a journalist to investigate and report on the actual outcomes.

Would a robust Free Food network be better than Club Feast? Perhaps? CF optimizes a somewhat different problem, but perhaps that could be layered into FF as well? Is there additional value CF could bring that benefits from its centralization? Not really sure. Some things I am sure about are that both of these are better than the dominant centralized apps, and that Free Food really needs to change its name, and the paltry amount of tests in `libfood` is scary 😂.

 

An Ode to Roblox as a Gathering Place

I haven't spent a lot of time in Roblox, even though both of my kids have spent significant amounts of their time and my money there, but this essay about how it compares to those places where teenagers hang out and create their own space away from the rest of the world really resonates. It makes me want to give it a try again.

Some choice excerpts:

On his first experience in Roblox:

In one of the very first games we played together (a work-in-progress safari game, the link to which I have since lost), V became a zebra, and I was a lioness. We ran around a broad plain populated by other animals, trees in the distance, low clouds overhead, and the buzzing of insects on a 2-minute loop. The chat was full of messages from prey to prey, predator to predator. V was almost immediately killed by a cheetah who then got in the chat to say, “Overyone come to pr,” “theres meat.” Summoned, I did so, and as I ate the still-living digital body of my friend in the company of a stranger in the shape of a wild dog, I thought, “Oh. This is special.”

On the game creation tools:

But perhaps the most interesting thing about Roblox Studio is the Toolbox. Other game engines have assets stores, but none of them feel like this: a rollicking, copyright-fucked, messy, virus-filled, unsortable pile of labor and of love.

On the long tail of forgotten worlds (games) waiting to be stumbled upon:

But the things I am making in Roblox are not what are unique or compelling about Roblox, and the same could be said for most of the big games that populate the platform’s front page. Instead, what is so special here are the millions of bizarre little worlds, all networked together and waiting (mostly empty, sometimes for over a decade) to be dropped into and explored with friends.

On the "brutal" monetization situation:

As a developer, you can monetize your own games in a variety of ways, from the above-board (tip jars! cosmetics!) to the scammy. Developers earn 70% of Robux spent in their games, which is a pretty standard cut for an app store/developer split. However, getting USD back out of Robux is a different story. The payout exchange rate drops to $0.0035 USD per 1 Robux, meaning the takeaway in real world currency is roughly 24.5% of any in-game commerce—a brutally extractive exchange rate.

Fighting Date Rape With Nail Polish

Now that Bill Cosby got an early release from prison, my friend Paul brought my attention to the company Undercover Colors that developed a clear nail polish that allows you to check a drink for drugs by dipping a fingernail into the drink. The nail polish changes colors if drugs are encountered.

Brilliant! And love that it was founded by NC State students (didn't to school there, but did participate in their rugby club as a townie).

 

It looks like the product has evolved slightly to a more typical strip test kit though. I supposed the manufacturing costs proved too high? Hopefully they are still working on the more subtle version.

Post Pandemic Predictions

I started compiling this list before George Floyd was murdered, and its triteness bothers me now so I'm just going to post it and move on.

In no particular order:

• Masks largely stay culturally accepted in flu and allergy seasons from now on in the USA, but will always carry a political connotation so some groups will never wear them and mock those that do, but like punk rockers have always mocked people in suits.
• 15 years from now, a common trope will be determining how old some young adult is by what basic K-12 subject they seemed to have completely missed. "How old is Alexandra? Well she can never remember what a gerund is, she must be 27-28."
• It'll be seen as the inflection point for polyamory going mainstream when the released masses just can't get enough of each other 😂.
• 2021: long hair on dudes is back in fashion.
• The artist live stream phenomenon is too beloved to simply disappear, but outdoor live music venues are going to see a boom. There might even be a combination of the two.

Comments

[Gen]

Dav, while I am much closer to the skeptic/atheist side of the spectrum in the grand scheme of things, I just don't see religious people giving up what they believe in.

For better or for worse, religion is a part of humanity, (maybe it even helps to define what it is to be human) and I'm not sure we'd be better off as a race if we were all aetheist.

I just hope that within my lifetime we receive definitive proof of extra-terrestrial life. That would really shake things up ;)

[Dav]

Yes, I certainly do believe that religion can play a positive effect on many people's lives.

A good old friend of mine is probably the smartest person I've ever known. He earned three bachelor's degrees (physics, chemistry and mathematics) and then to my surprise became a devout fundamentalist christian. He nows believes every word in the bible. -Every- -word-. I can appreciate that as he delved further into the nature of the universe he began to see that while science cannot yet prove the existence of God it certainly can't disprove it either. But the reason I'm totally OK with him 'switching teams' is that he always had a bit of a devious streak, and he told me that if he could not believe in the christian mythology (well he didn't call it a mythology), with it's rewards and punishments for the devout and sinners, he would probably be a rather evil person and disrupt society in various negative ways. I believe him, and I believe it's better for him to believe in God.

Religion was discussed much in the book The Lucifer Principle which I blogged about a few entries back (read it, I doubt you would be disappointed). It has played a major part in shaping our global societies, for better and for worse, by acting as a transport mechanism of memes much as RNA transports genes around. Religion and War are tightly linked in that regard.

Most of my friends and family here in California, while I love them dearly (and one of them wholly), are total fruitcakes. They believe in all kinds of stuff from new age astrological psychic power nonsense, to chinese ghost stories, to homeopathic medicine. I don't spend a lot of time trying to make them apply some critical thinking to their beliefs (well, I've mostly given up).

As for extra-terrestrial life, I wouldn't be surprised if we find some simple forms of it right here in our own solar system.

[sean]

I've been a fan of the Skeptical Inquirer for years but I wasn't aware of this Skeptic magazine. I'll have to check it out.

Uber-skeptic The Amazing Randi continues to kick granola-crunching new-age ass, and not just because he's based in my hometown of Ft. Lauderdale. And the meta-skeptical Fortean Times can be good for chuckles...

Here are two sites that are handy to link to for quick refutation of fruitcake friends' boneheaded e-mails about everything from astrology to zombies: The Skeptic's Dictionary and urbanlegends.com

-Sean (a Californian and a freak, but NOT a fruitcake.)

[sean]

shit, why do you command the Baby Jesus to strip html from akuaku comments? well here are those URLS:

http://www.randi.org/
http://www.forteantimes.com/
http://skepdic.com/
urbanlegends.com

[alexis]

> People gravitate toward the "skeptical movement"
> when they are strong enough or open-minded
> enough to accept the responsibility, effort,
> and personal sacrifice (socially, and
> spiritually) that it requires.

And sometimes they gravitate to skepticism when they are obtuse enough to lack a significant spiritual sensibility to begin with, to have any feeling for what it is that draws thinking people to religion.

That said, atheists are usually as devout as they come.